The Newbery Medal-winning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
gives readers a virtuoso performance in verse in this profoundly
original epic pitched just right for fans of poetry, history, mythology,
and fantasy.
Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz
can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, "ringed by a
restless sea," live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in
common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their
lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as
clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched
from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by
Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto is a spoiled
aristocrat, a girl as precious as amber but willful and wild. She'll
marry and be tamed--the curse of all highborn girls--but risk her life
for a season first to serve Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
Bound by destiny, Melisto and Rhaskos--Amber and Clay--never meet in the
flesh. By the time they do, one of them is a ghost. But the thin line
between life and death is just one boundary their unlikely friendship
crosses. It takes an army of snarky gods and fearsome goddesses, slaves
and masters, mothers and philosophers to help shape their story into a
gorgeously distilled, symphonic tour de force.
Blending verse, prose, and illustrated archaeological "artifacts," this
is a tale that vividly transcends time, an indelible reminder of the
power of language to illuminate the over- and underworlds of human
history.
